As with many other aspects of modern day life, computer systems have assumed a significant role in almost every business. Today, it is extremely rare to find a person or organization that is not significantly dependent upon computer applications. Often, work can come to a complete standstill when critical applications become unavailable.
IT (information technology) personnel are generally responsible for delivering application functionality to end users. As such, IT personnel may rely upon a collection of hardware and software, of networks, systems, and databases to ensure this availability. Many IT personnel are responsible for both creating the infrastructure required by the applications, as well as for ensuring that the applications are available and properly functioning when needed.
In today's economy, an IT organization can easily spend large amounts of money buying the latest technology in an attempt to ensure delivery of services to its clients. However, such measures are often inadequate. In order to be able to consistently deliver applications and services to clients, an IT organization may also need a management infrastructure to monitor and control underlying applications and hardware. Without such a management infrastructure, it is generally not possible to ensure twenty-four hours per day/seven days per week (24/7) availability and performance of important applications.
A management infrastructure generally consists of those components that may be used by IT personnel to ensure the delivery of services to its clients. Such an infrastructure might include hardware, software and human components. While there are many facets to ensuring availability, one of the most important is real time monitoring and control of networks, systems, applications, and databases such that problems may be detected, anticipated and, in some cases, corrected.
Effective real time monitoring generally requires that the IT organization have a set of management tools designed to support this part of the IT function. Efficient monitoring and control may be best implemented using tools to automate some of the processes.
In many situations, it is essential to incorporate tools as part of the management processes for two primary reasons. First, tools generally provide a lower cost of monitoring large numbers of components, i.e., networks, systems, applications and databases. For example, some management systems are capable of monitoring hundreds of objects or components. To manually manage the same complex combination of hardware and software distributed over multiple locations would generally require a large staff. Such a staff would be necessary to perform the constant monitoring of the components and would be in addition to the staff required to resolve any detected problems.
Another major advantage offered by management tools with regard to monitoring is that it is generally possible to detect and resolve problems more quickly. An automated solution is often able to detect problems within seconds of occurrence. A human operator will generally take much more time to manually perform the same or similar functions necessary to detect a problem.
While monitoring managed environments is key, various aspects of controlling the environment, including problem resolution, are equally important. Management tools lead to shorter times for problem resolution often at a lower cost. As such, without a set of management tools to automate the processes of detecting and correcting problems, IT personnel would be faced with a virtually impossible task. Without the aid of monitoring and controlling systems, an IT organization is often forced to provide a lower level of service at a significantly higher cost.